Process – Life Priorities
Gevurah can support us to reorganize our lives, to update our priorities, and decide where and how to spend our time and energy. It’s easy to get waylaid by demands that don’t actually support us, meet our passions, or lead us in the directions we most want to go. It sometimes seems as if most of our life force is given to unrewarding activities. Some of these we have little to no choice about, such as turning up for work, running a household, and meeting family obligations. But it can be interesting – even empowering – to examine what our choices look like, both as we live them currently, and how we might organize them in the future.
Time: 30 – 60 minutes
You will need: Pen and paper, or journal
The Process
Write out a list of the activities you currently spend time doing. Some of these might be grouped together, for example household stuff, rather than listing separate items. Some of them you might want to separate out, such as teaching work, writing work, work admin, work meetings. The main criteria for grouping or separating things is how much you love them – so as I pretty much equally love (or not) all aspects of household stuff, I’ve grouped it together, and as I’m passionate about some aspects of my work but much less so about others, I’ve separated them out. For the initial list, use your gut feeling. You can always adjust the items later.
Go through each item on the list, feeling into your relationship to it and rating it honestly. Use a star rating system – this was my definition of the star rating, below. Yours might be slightly different. I drew the stars under my items, you might prefer just to use a number, a color or some other method.
5 stars = I passionately love this «««««
4 stars = I mostly love this ««««
3 stars = I can take it or leave it, it’s okay «««
2 stars = It’s bearable ««
1 star = I wouldn’t care if I never did this again «
Rewrite all the items in groups of star ratings, so you now have a group of 5 star items, a group of 4 star items, and so on. Check if you need to make any adjustments to where various items appear; for example I had initially given only 4 stars to something that, on reflection, was really one of my highest priorities. When I changed it to 5 stars it felt daring and confronting, but true.
Look at the group of 5 star items. Consider – what would your life be like if you organized everything else around them?
Look at your 4 star and 5 star items together. What would your life look like if these were your priorities? What changes would you need to make?
Look at your 1 star and 2 star items. Can you get rid of any of them? What steps would you need to take to do that? Do you want to take those steps?
Look at your 3 star items. Can you minimize any of them, or adjust them so that they become 4 star, or 5 star items? What would you have to do, to make this happen?
Now you can undertake visioning, spell-work, or planning. Perhaps you will do a spell around this, or dream or vision how it would be if your 5 star items were your central priorities. Perhaps you have a practical approach and want to draw up lists, or make a plan.
At the very least, write your 5 star items on a new page or piece of paper – and maybe you want to decorate it in some way – and come back to this. Often.